


Untitled (National Cheerleading Championship)

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of us wanted him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (National Cheerleading Championship)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted January 2005.

They fight over the telephone for a couple of days. Mulder goes golfing and keeps saying, “hang on,” putting his cell phone down in the grass and taking his shot, then picking it up again and continuing like there was no break. Mulder’s handicap gets better and he still says Zito doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue what this is like.

Mulder gets a letter from Zito, a tab of Xanax Scotch-taped to white paper and folded into an envelope, block writing telling him to ‘Calm the fuck down and return my fucking calls.’

Mulder watches a lot of tape, copies of games that he uses to study hitters, his own performances from June and July, and Zito a couple of years ago, and Hudson’s rookie year and sometimes, if he’s the right kind of drunk, Rich Harden last August, still looking all photograph-young and like he’s out past curfew.

Eric Chavez calls from Hollywood. He just ended up there, he thinks he might have been going to his parents’ house. He needs the address to Zito’s sister’s new place, because he never writes that stuff down and Mulder always does. The house is half up the hill, on stilts. Zito’s big bedroom window faces west, and he gets woken up by sunset the way other people are woken up by dawn.

Chavez keeps saying, “’cause it’s just me and him, now, you know, we should probably talk.” Mulder can’t really follow his logic. He cracks a fresh beer on his belt buckle, and flips through his address book, neatly alphabetized and the very last entry.

Three days from now, Zito will call and say doubtfully, “Um, Eric was here last night. I didn’t know he was still like that.” It’ll sound like their rookie year again, when Zito came into Mulder’s room and laid down on his bed, looking all shell-shocked with his hair in his eyes and his lip bitten, “Chavvy’s kind of crazy, man,” and a month later Mulder saw Chavez pushing Zito up against the side of the garage, beyond the patio lights and a half-full Heineken bottle in Zito’s hand, pressed into Chavez’s side.

It hasn’t been like that for a long time, though. But Chavez won’t stay. He goes back to Oakland and Zito can’t sleep for a couple of days, and finds himself one morning driving to Scottsdale. He takes a Vicodin with his 7-Eleven coffee and pulls into a gas station in Phoenix to fix his hair and buy a chocolate bar.

Mulder’s hardly thrilled to see Zito through the long window in the front door. Their fight did not seem remotely serious enough to be done in person, not yet. You have to let these things build, establish the appropriate tension.

Zito pushes in and immediately gets a beer from the fridge, parks himself on the couch with his shoes off like this is Oakland or something. He changes the channel to something dumb and asks, “Spot me twenty to order a pizza, dude? I’ll let you get meat on it.”

Mulder would prefer to get the big dramatic fight out of the way first, but he’s hungry, and so they ate dinner together on the couch and watched the national cheerleading championship on ESPN2. Zito pulled out a bunch of little bottles of liquor, hotel-stolen, but didn't open any of them, just left them ranked on the coffee table.

Hudson called just before the first game of the 1988 World Series started on ESPN Classic. Mulder let his phone ring all the way through, and then Hudson said to the machine, “Awright, well, call me back. We’re in Asheville, but my phone still works.” Mulder’s youngest brother called after that, talking about real estate listings in St. Louis.

When Eckersley took the mound, Zito put his hand on Mulder’s knee and licked his neck, twisted at the waist and his nose dog-cold against Mulder’s jaw. Mulder kissed him quick, and grabbed his legs, pulling them over and knocking the coffee table, a clatter of miniature bottles ringing on the carpet. Mulder got Zito pushed down into the couch, one hand still hooked under Zito’s knees and the other tugging Zito’s shirt buttons open.

They fucked awkwardly like teenagers, Zito’s shirt hanging onto one arm and Mulder’s watchband scratching his stomach. Zito kept closing his eyes tightly in concentration, his forehead pressed into Mulder’s shoulder or arm. Kirk Gibson limp-jogged and pumped his arm, and Chavez Ravine howled gleefully as the A’s walked slowly back into their dugout.

Afterwards, Mulder said into Zito’s neck, “If that’s why you came out, you coulda just said, man.”

“’s not why I came out,” Zito told him sleepily, rubbing his face on Mulder’s hair like he had an itch and was too lazy to reach up.

“What, added bonus?” Mulder snickered to himself, gnawing absently at Zito’s collarbone.

“Don’t know why I came out. Just. Seemed like the thing to do.”

Mulder sighed. Chavez had actively left to go back to his wife, and Hudson was on the other side of the country. It wasn’t a big mystery, Zito coming to find Mulder. It wasn’t as if Zito’d really had much of a choice.

“You like fighting better in person,” Mulder said casually.

“That’s true, I do.” Mulder was lying on one of Zito’s arms; he could feel Zito’s hand tapping at his back, drawing letters. Mulder thought he’d probably fall asleep soon.

“I don’t want you to go,” Zito said, and Mulder could feel each word in Zito’s throat, buzzing under Mulder’s mouth.

“Yeah, well.”

Zito wound his other arm around Mulder, feeling not too okay with everything, after all, and on the television Stuart Scott started talking about spring training.

THE END


End file.
